U.s. Weighing Lifetime Income For Defectors

January 21, 1986|By New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Reagan administration is considering plans to provide guaranteed lifetime incomes to high-ranking defectors and may try to reduce the waiting time required for conferral of American citizenship.

A senior administration official said the proposals were the result of an interagency review of the handling by the United States of Vitaly Yurchenko, the Soviet intelligence official who defected to the West last summer but later decided to return to Moscow.

The administration, by offering permanent income and conferring citizenship more speedily, would hope to prompt additional defections while reducing the chance that a defector would want to leave the United States, the official said Sunday.

Although not a direct concern in the Yurchenko case, the intelligence community has also been criticized for purported reluctance to provide assured incomes for defectors. Some have complained that the CIA has failed to help them find suitable jobs.

Another proposal under consideration at the White House would sharply reduce the waiting time, now sometimes as long as 5 years to 10 years, facing some defectors who want to become American citizens.